Have you heard about Hiring for Hope? It’s a grassroots, nationally recognized 501(c)3 public charity, conceptualized as a Life Management Community (LMC) designed to help people manage and overcome all the obstacles associated with family building and/or career management challenges.

I heard about this group a while back from Johann Lohrmann, who wrote a guest post on mind-mapping your job search. He put me in touch with Tegan Acree, Hiring for Hope’s Founder and President.

Hiring for Hope offers assistance with:

• Career and Family Building Management
• Financial Assistance
• Online Networking/Support
• Workforce Solutions

Hiring for Hope is made up almost entirely of volunteers committed to their mission. I’m excited to be volunteering for a Career Connection Forum event on July 26th in Marietta, GA. This is my first time volunteering for the group, and I am really excited.

Unemployment is such a huge problem in Georgia these days, and I see the impacts of this almost every day. I live in a neighborhood with a mix of rental properties and single-family homes, and many of my neighbors are unemployed. I’ve offered to help a few of my neighbors with coaching and résumés but some of them have been out of work so long they have given up.

Groups like Hiring for Hope combat the very real problems of unemployment and that lost sense of hope that sometimes goes along with it. I’m glad to be doing what I can to contribute. And I’d like to challenge you to do the same.

I’ve signed up to be an online fundraiser for Hiring for Hope and have set a $1000 goal. Please donate what you can, and help give hope and practical assistance to those in need. Click on the badge below to go to my fundraising page. Thanks for helping in whatever way you can.

If you are still looking for a job, July and August can be tough times. You may see your friends and colleagues moving into new positions, starting trainings, and getting ready to teach classes. Search processes can move quickly at some institutions, and come to a standstill at others.

Staying motivated during this phase of your job search  is essential, but it can be really hard to do on your own. But this phase is not a time to give up or back-burner your search. Filling essential positions is a priority for most institutions, and being in the right place, at the right time, and in the right frame of mind can make all the difference.

To help you keep going, I’m offering a coaching special again, and it will feature 4 1-on-1 sessions over 3 months, brief e-mail and phone check-ins for 6 months, and access to online activities and select webinars. And, after talking with a few potential clients about what they would find attractive, I’ve kept the price the same as last year’s “8 Weeks to August” coaching program ($300) but set up a payment plan for it, to allow clients who join the program to stretch out the payments.

And, like last year’s coaching special (and like I offer for all of my coaching services), I am offering a money-back guarantee. If you participate in all the coaching and are not satisfied with your progress, you can ask for your money back (some of it or all of it!) If I can’t help you, then I don’t want your money.

More information about the summer coaching special is available at the sales page for this program, or by e-mailing me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com.

If you are still looking for a job, don’t wait! The special price for this offer will expire July 15, or when enrollment reaches 20, whichever comes first. At this point, I have a few clients already lined up, and based on early feedback, I’m expecting a good response.

This is the lowest rate I expect to offer on individual coaching this year, and I am planning to raise my regular rates on August 1st, and to change the structure of packages I offer individual clients.

So, if you are still looking for a job, and could use a strategic partner to help you move forward in your career, act now!

Go to the sales page and sign up now for the Summer Coaching Special.

How many times in your career have you faced a decision where there was a good job in front of you (maybe even offered to you) and you knew it was a terrible fit, or that the benefits outweighed the costs? This has happened several times to me, and luckily, in most cases, I had the good sense to walk away.

In those cases when I didn’t, though, I took a job and was miserable. It’s also happened that I took jobs and the jobs changed, or my interests changed at a different pace than the jobs (or institutions) adapted to change. In cases like these, it’s best to know what you are not.

In this vein, I want to clearly describe what I am not, and what Higher Ed Career Coach is not.

• I am not strictly a professional blogger. First and foremost, I am a professional career coach, organizational consultant and speaker. The blogging supports the dissemination of my ideas, of my perspectives on career strategy, and serves as a marketing vehicle for my coaching programs and services (individual and group coaching, webinars, information products, etc.)
• I am not an advertising professional, and this is not a “job search” site. You cannot find job listings here, and I have no intention of becoming a job board, in part because that is a saturated market, and in part because I believe that sector of the advertising marketplace is dying, as the web 1.0 model of “job boards” is being replaced by social advertising.
• I am not a conventional information marketer. I am an educator and a coach. Anything I sell through this site will be:
  • Educational (i.e., based in philosophy but instructional in nature and delivery)
  • Reflect my personal and professional perspectives as a reformed educator, critic, strategist, and an educational reformer (i.e., an outsider from the inside, now looking back in, and commenting on what is good and what is broken)
  • Concerned with convergence of ideas, lessons from other industries and fields, and real-world factors, including economic factors, political concerns, and the environment.
  • Intelligent, in that readers can expect articles to be generally written at or above the college reading level. My assumption as publisher is that my readers are smart, not easily confused, and engaged in the development of coherent and well-rounded perspectives on a variety of topics. The Flesch reading ease score for all submissions is available to me as editor and publisher, and most articles on the site rate as “difficult” or above. Articles are not revised for that reason, as long as uses of grammar and spelling are appropriate. Articles appearing here assume that the reader is an academic professional, member of the faculty, or someone capable of functioning in those capacities, so articles will not be “dumbed down.”
  • Social, in that topics that relate to social networking and intelligence, and how they play into job searches and career planning, will be regular features. Understanding how to create a socially intelligent career strategy is a core concept of this site, and in most cases, coverage of other topics will also include ways to approach those topics in socially intelligent, relevant and appropriate ways.
  • A good-humored, good-natured and personal brand. I want this site, and my corporate brand to reflect my values and the values of everyday educators who work in the trenches and persevere in living lives of service and commitment, despite the many and growing challenges of modern higher education.

The site’s values are drawn from the well of my experience, my commitment to the core values mentioned above, and my belief that the best answers are rooted in how individuals, institutions, businesses (including independent small businesses like my own), and personal learning networks work together to raise the collective intelligence of our society and mobilize change through social action.

To be most effective, we need to have a sense of humor as well as a sense of commitment, a belief in the good intentions of others, met with our own good intentions, and brought to life and to action by the power of personal relationships, common interests, and common goals, and not dictated by traditional methods of business, most importantly closed networks, claims on personal ownership of collective public information, and the sheer pursuit of financial gain at the expense of competitors and the public good.

My financial goals for this site are simple and rooted in the American dream. I want to support my family and spend time with them, support my profession and be able to criticize it, so that it can change and grow. I want to have good conversations with intelligent, kind, committed people. And one day, I want to be able to retire and play with my grandchildren and work in the garden, without being a shriveled up husk of a man, spit out by a system that didn’t understand him and never valued his contributions appropriately. (Which is where I was headed, if I had stayed at Penn State.)

As I mentioned, it’s never been about money. It’s always been about passion for ideas, service to the greater good, and helping people like me live lives of purpose and authenticity

Hopefully this article, and others published recently have cleared up for you what this site is and is not about, and who is or is not responsible for the content herein. If you like the ideals that this site is committed to, please keep reading and join the conversation.

If you are looking for intelligent career strategies to help you move forward in your career, and intelligent ideas for solving the problems of higher education, and you don’t mind the contrarian views, crusty language and occasional humor, then Higher Ed Career Coach is the site for you.

If you just looking for position listings, or run-of-the-mill career advice, visit a job board like HigherEdJobs or Monster.Com, a university human resources page, or LinkedIn.

That’s where I would go, if I were looking for a job, instead of planning a social revolution.

The unfortunate reality of being a convergent is that people don’t get you. As I mentioned last week in my posts on game theory, convergents are hard to “get” because people try too hard to fit them neatly into their own boxes (or circles) and to define what they know and what they do in familiar terms.

Convergents are not happy when constrained by familiarity and party-line thinking. They like to learn what others are doing, and integrate new knowledge, practices, and ideas into their own personal frameworks. They are those who give birth to new ideas and ways of doing things.

Convergent thinking and convergent practice have always been at the center of my personal journey and progress. The idea for Higher Ed Career Coach was born out of convergence of my personal and professional circumstances, and what I recognized as the needs of a field straining to adapt to the realities of reduced budgets, economic pressures of the marketplace, the changing expectations of Millennials coming into the workplace, and the impacts of new technology and social media, upon the education industry’s ecosystem.

I’d reached a point in my career when I knew…absolutely knew that the system as a whole was broken, and that my personal circumstances were a great example of what was wrong with the system. I also knew that my frustration with that fact was going to ruin me and my career. So the best thing I could do, for myself, my employer, and for the profession, was to move on.

But I had a strong commitment to the profession, and a strong belief that I could be a part of the broader discussions that would move our institutions and our field forward. So I founded my websites and began developing my personal brand as a life and career coach for persons in higher education. I’d been talking about becoming a coach on and off for five or six years at that point, but had finally taken some practical steps to research coach training programs and to really work on understanding the best way to become certified through a reputable program and to make a radical career change. That’s my story. What’s yours?

• What points of convergence have led you to new discoveries in your career?
• How can you bring together your personal interests into a career concept that will help you move forward?
• What can you do to drive change in higher education?
• Are you doing those things?

Are you still looking for a job in higher education? If so, my summer coaching special may be for you!

I’ve been having a few issues with getting my sales page done for the summer coaching special, but wanted to let people know the details. Sales pages can come later. The important thing is the offer.

Here it is:

For $50 month for 3 months and the balance $150 within 6 months? ($300 total), here’s what you will get:

• 4 sessions of 45 minutes to an hour (4 coaching hours) over 3 months-by end of September

• Unlimited brief e-mails and phone coaching/catch-ups of 20 minutes or less for 6 months. (until the new year)
• Membership in the online group and all activities there, to do on your own, and work out your strategy. I will be participating in the discussions.
• Free admission to select job-search webinars and teleseminars for 3 months.
• Ability to renew at the same rate for 3 more months if you don’t have a job.
• Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied for any reason, as long as you have actively engaged in coaching and activities.

If this sounds okay to you, I can invoice you via PayPal for $50/month for the next 3 months. You would need to pay the PayPal service fees. Or you could send me a check.

Either way, I am hoping there will be interest. I am equipped and ready to take a maximum of 20 job-seekers at any time, so respond now if you are interested. I will have a waiting list, if necessary, but if you need help now, that probably won’t do it for you. So don’t wait!

If all this sounds good, e-mail me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com and I will get you online access to the course and an invitation to the course e-mail list.

I have already had several  inquiries without even advertising, so I expect this group to fill quickly. Don’t let that discourage you, but also don’t sit on your hands.

Let’s get you a job this fall. Act now.